No. I will not venture down another path of "Frozen." I will NOT. I will BURN the disc before Ella finds it. Since last month, I've taken on a fun venture of Nanny-ing after my niece... and while I absolutely love having another human to talk to, if I have to watch "Frozen" ONE MORE TIME, I might have to be committed. COMMITTED.
Back to my initial thought. As Crazy as it sounds, I would absolutely love it if babies were born at 10 months old. This month has been so much fun, and I have adored every moment of it. Even the 4 o'clock in the mornings. We're slowly weaning out of night feedings around her, so when she wakes up in the wee hours of the morning, it's because she wants to be cuddled and rocked. And my soul just absorbs and adores every second of it. Sometimes I fall asleep in the rocker with her... sometimes I kiss her baby face until she wakes up irritated and we start all over. Regardless, She has been an absolute dream this month. Funny little words are escaping her lips more and more, including "Good Job!" (Coo Chob!) and "Night Night!" (NyeNye!) and it just slays us every time. She's developed an adoration for her Daddy that neither of us can explain, especially since this side of a month ago, she would only play with him from the comfort of my shoulder. I, for one, am incredibly thankful for it. It means that Daddy gets to take a shift from 6:30 to 8 A.M., since he's just so proud of her for being a happy morning baby. I don't care how cute she is, there will never be a smile from me before the sun rises. We have loved every bit of this month, and it is amazing to me just how much my morale has lifted by having a relatively happy baby.
It was a big month for us in terms of milestones. Not only do we have a walker on our hands... we have a .... wait for it. Tooth. A Tooth! TOOOOOOOOTH! I cannot even begin to convey my joy. You would think that I would be more excited to have a walking baby, but I will always remember that she walked before she had a tooth. She started the walking thing 2 days past her 10 month birthday, and cut a tooth two weeks later. It has done wonders for her mood. I guess it really does wear on them. Once that tooth cut through, her sleeping patterns changed so drastically. We're really just in a good place. Let's call a spade a spade. I like this Ella a lot more than 6 month old Ella.
Other than that, we are just absorbing every minute of this hilarious baby. She is SO full of life, joy, and sarcasm. She keeps me laughing. She's figured out that she can communicate through her eyebrows, and it's the funniest thing about our day right now. Her hair is rapidly turning platinum, especially since she spends so much time in the sun. She inherited her daddy's love for vitamin D, and her complexion is identical to his. So now in all family photos, it'll be two extremely tanned Gaines and one porcelain doll, tinted a shade of scarlet. Seriously, fifteen minutes in the sun leaves me sunburned. I'm simultaneously thrilled and jealous for her. She walks in circles around our living room and actually asks us to go night night. For the most part, she sleeps from 9 to 9, but just like any kid, we have bad days... and nights. I'm so thankful for my sweet friend Kendal, who actually sat down with me and said "Hey, I breastfed too. So Believe me when I say, it's time to axe the night feeding." After two nights, she was over that night time feeding, and sleeping 11 hours a night. I was in heaven... and then we left for camp and didn't sleep for a week. But since we've been back, she's still sleeping through the night. I'm dreading an upcoming trip to Dallas, but hopefully she recovers quickly again. It was so nice to hear from another breastfed mom that it's okay to let them skip a feeding. I'm always so fearful that she isn't getting what she needs, but now that she's suffered through those few hungry nights, she's a champion sleeper, and what teeny trace of baby fever I had is gone like the wind. Kaylea loves her some sleep.
I think that's most of it. It was an easy breezy month. I rejoiced in her every moment this month, because she's really just turned into so much fun. My heart strings tug a little because I already see a super independent spirit peeking through the surface of that sweet grin, but I don't have any room to talk about those kinds of things. We read a book before Nap and bedtime, and she lays quietly on me while I read. She doesn't grab the pages or try to take the book away... occasionally she'll point at something that catches her fancy, but it's my absolute favorite thing to do with her. She's actually opting to read instead of nurse to sleep at night, so my hope is that she's kind of weaning herself. I cannot even bear the thought of doing it to her, so it would be ideal if she did it to me instead. For the first time in this entire blog, I welcome weaning tricks. I'm not super interested in weaning her completely, but I would love to mellow it down to one morning and one evening feed.
To summarize: My child is a ball of sunshine. Maybe I'm just not feeling very "Bloggy" this month, so I'll try again next time for her 12 month if I can bear to type those words again. See ya next time!
Don't even ask about that face, I have no idea. But to sum up my entire view on parenting: Choose your battles.
